June 2006
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2006.
It seems that there’s a new DJ Shadow album out this fall called Outsider. Interesting. DJ Shadow’s music played a seminal role in my university days. I’ll have to check out the new tracks on the audio player. DJ Shadow deserves its own post but I’m too tired right now to write any more. Perhaps some other time.
Tags: dj-shadow, Music, outsider
If we didn’t have free drinks at work I could use this manual (PDF link, why not use FoxIt?) to hack the vending machine on the main floor of our building. Then I could get all of the free Coke that I’d need. That is, until I’d inevitably get caught and then I’d have to return the hacked merchandise.
Tags: coca-cola, coke, hacks, vending-machine
The megabin project here in Toronto is dead. I have to say that the whole project was a big failure; everywhere that I saw the new “improved” garbage bins they were overflowing with garbage and let me tell you – when a garbage bin that is overflowing it doesn’t matter how big or small the ad is on the bin itself, it’s not going to make you think favourably on whatever they’re advertising.
Fortunately the city council had some wise thoughts and voted out the bins. Sort of. They won’t be expanding the number of garbage bins in the city but the ones that are currently out there (and there are quite a few) will remain until they decide on what to replace them with. The upside is that you can contact your local city councillor and request them to be removed from your ward. You can go here to find your ward. I’m going to contact my councillor tomorrow.
The sooner we get rid of these unworkable, unusable garbage bins and return to more sensible garbage bins that actually can store garbage (I believe this is the intended purpose of a garbage bin) rather than having them be mainly advertising with a few holes for some garbage.
Tags: brian-ashton, city-council, eucan, garbage-bins, megabin, Toronto
Via BoingBoing I read this fantastic exchange with a Nigerian scam artist and how the anti-scam worked so well with this guy. The anti-scammer managed to get the scam artist to carve (or calve) a replica of a Commodore 64 keyboard out of wood thinking that he would win a scholarship. It’s a terrific read.
Tags: 419, antiscam, commodore-64, scam
I got my hair cut on Saturday morning. I go to this little place in the plaza near our house called Mario’s hairstyling. It’s run by a guy named Mario and he rents out other chairs to hair stylists. Mario isn’t a terribly busy guy so I can just walk in when I eventually decide to get a haircut and I just have to wait until the customer in front of me is done and then I get served.
He cuts my hair quickly and without any comments or conversation. That’s ok with me, small talk usually isn’t necessary with a barber. You’re there for one thing and that’s to get your hair cut and fast. If it also gets cut well then that’s a bonus. Fortunately for me, Mario does cut my hair well.
I have a history with barbers named Mario. When my parents lived in Michigan I used to get my hair cut only when I went home (I was lazy) and I always went to Mario’s in Rochester Hills. That Mario was similar to this Mario in that neither really talked too much and yet they were fairly busy and gave good haircuts.
It feels much better to have my hair cut. It’s not as heavy and with the weather no doubt turning quite warm over the next several weeks it’s important to have lighter hair. Not lighter in the colour sense but lighter in the weight sense. I look incredibly stylish and chic now. That’ll change in the next couple of weeks though as the hair grows back. Until then though I’ll be living the high life. Perhaps even the High Life.
A question about that last link – why does a beer site have to be using SSL? Does it really matter that my beer surfing is encrypted?
Tags: barber, chic, fashionable, haircut, high-life, mario, mario's-hairstyling, miller-high-life, rochester-hills
I’m fortunate in that I work for a company and work in a job that allows me to work from home if I want to. A lot of people can’t do this and I’m grateful that when I’m feeling sick or when I sleep in (like today) I can still get my job done from home through a VPN. I actually get a lot accomplished when I work from home, perhaps I get too much done as I tend to forget to stop for breakfast and/or lunch. I didn’t eat very much today before dinner and I was pretty hungry once Marcy got home.
It was a good thing that today was so productive because tomorrow I have to leave a bit early as we’re going to see Etta James. Thursday I might have to leave early too because one of the teachers at Marcy’s school is having a little get-together at her place in Uxbridge. I’m not sure how I’m going to get there on time but I’ll try my hardest.
Tags: Commuting, etta-james, Technology, telecommuting, uxbridge, vpn, Work
At work I was tired of having my computer crash because I wanted to open a PDF document. Adobe Acrobat seems to have a bad habit of remaining in memory and generally locking up the CPU for no apparent reason. Sometimes it’s because it’s trying to do an update check and I think some of the other times it’s just poorly integrated into the browser.
I needed something better so a coworker and I spent some time and found a tool called Foxit Reader. It does exactly what it says it does – it’s a small, fast, clean and free PDF reader. The difference in loading times between it and Acrobat is phenomenal. It’s a fantastic replacement (so far) for me so if you’re looking for an alternative on Windows to view PDF files, give Foxit Reader a try.
Tags: acrobat, adobe, foxit-reader, pdf
This morning when I woke up I had a huge hankering for popcorn. I’m not really sure why; perhaps it’s because we haven’t had any in a little while and my brain was in need of its deliciousness. We were watching this movie and since movies and popcorn go so well together I made some up for us to enjoy.
It was pretty tasty but I think we’ve grown used to the super-deliciousness (or even uber-deliciousness) of the popcorn we bought when we were in Ohio last time. We got it in Amish Country and it’s rainbow-coloured (the u in colour gets put in when we cross the border). For some reason it just tastes really great; maybe it’s the type of corn that they use. My only complaint is that since we use an air popper (no more microwave popcorn for us) the popcorn all has to go through the opening at the front of the popper and for some reason the popcorn underneath the popped kernels can’t seem to force them into the bowl so I end up with a backlog of popcorn at the opening that can’t fall into the bowl without me prodding it to do so.
Other than that though, it’s some of the best popcorn I’ve ever had.
Tags: amish-country, cravings, ohio, popcorn, robin-and-the-7-hoods
I need to take allergy pills during the summer season otherwise I can end up deteriorating into a sneezing mess at any given time. I take pills that last me 24 hours so that I don’t need to worry about taking them multiple times during the day. I take them when I get up and it’s part of my routine.
The problem occurs when I don’t wake up at the same time each day. Usually I wake up at 6:15 AM and I take my pill between 6:30 and 7 AM. Yesterday since I woke up so early, I took the pill at 4:30. That meant that by 4:30 this morning my allergy medication had worn out so what happened? I woke up sneezing. I managed to quell the sneezing but then around 6:30 when I usually take my pill, the sneezing flared up again so I decided to wake up and take the pill and go back to bed again.
Now that it’s been several hours since I took the medication my sneezing and allergies are under control. There’s just that period of time in the morning when I don’t wake up at a consistent time, particularly on weekends, that can cause problems and ruin my early-morning sleep. That’s the sleep you want to preserve too because it’s then that you’re most rested.
Tags: allergies, medication, sleep
I’ve decided to start keeping some basic statistics on our car beyond the actual value. These things included the mileage each week, the gas we put in (amount, cost, cost/L) and then from there I can maybe figure out what kind of fuel efficiency we’re getting and how our mileage changes from week to week, season to season. I’ve decided to try this out using Google Spreadsheets which I received an invite for a while back but had no reason to use it up until now (even now you could argue that I’m fabricating a reason to use it). I won’t be able to create any charts but all of the basic functionality you’d expect to find in a spreadsheet is there. I can even download it to Excel’s format or to CSV or HTML if I choose. Also I can allow other users to view or even edit my spreadsheet so it could be really great for collaboration. Once I have several weeks’ worth of data I’ll probably update on my experience with Google Spreadsheets and possibly some conclusions about our car. It certainly won’t be as detailed as my elevator analysis (which I should port over to this site at some point).
Tags: car, google-spreadsheets, honda-accord, statistics, tracking
Apparently there was a power outage in the area yesterday afternoon. When we got home last night after 10:30 the stove had the “PF” displayed and the time since the power outage (it was about 2:43). The power was out long enough to affect the computer so I turned it back on to check my email and such. It loaded up but after I logged in it said that there was new hardware to be configured. I haven’t added any new hardware and the hardware it was talking about was an Ethernet controller and a PCI port. I have a wireless network card for my machine here and that was the card that wasn’t functioning so I couldn’t get on the Internet to figure out what was going on. I tried having it autoconfigure the “found” hardware but that didn’t work. I turned off the computer instead because it wasn’t something that I wanted to deal with and we had to get up early this morning anyway so I figured that I would fix it today when I had some more time.
This morning when the computer was turned on it had no problems with the PCI port and it knew what type of wireless network card I had and after it installed the drivers everything worked again. I’m just a little confused as to why it happened in the first place. Did the power outage affect the motherboard in some way?
This machine is now over 4 years old. That’s fairly old in computer terms. I’ve been looking at some Dell machines, particularly the Media Center ones so that we could have recorded tv/music/pictures/whatever available to us. It would be an expensive purchase though so maybe if we save up we can look into that further on in the year. I don’t want to be spending $1000 right now when there are more pressing expenses to deal with.
Tags: dell, motherboard, network-card, pci, power-outage, troubleshooting, wireless
This morning Marcy and I had a really great treat. We had to take her cousin Rachel to the airport for her 6:30 AM flight so once we dropped her off at 5:30 we went downtown and drove through the streets to see what the city is like at that time on a Saturday morning.
The result? Around 6 there are a lot of taxi drivers. Between 6:30 and 7 you start to see maintenance workers starting their day. You also tend to see some younger people whose night hasn’t ended yet. After our breakfast at Mars (this place deserves its own post) we continued driving around until 8 AM when Clafouti opens. They bake their croissants fresh each morning and I can now understand why they go so quickly. Within minutes of its opening the store was packed with people who wanted to get some fresh pastries. We got some traditional butter ones, a raspberry one, a chocolate one and an almond one. They were truly heavenly once we ate them later on in the morning. They used fresh raspberries which was a real treat.
We then drove home via Queen Street. By this time it was about 8:15 or so so you’d start to see security guards walking their beat as well as some of the vendors starting to get their displays ready for the morning. One surprising fact for us was that Chinatown (west) was devoid of activity when we drove through. Saturdays is a huge day there so I figured it would be bustling with delivery trucks and shopkeepers even at 6 but we were wrong.
We discovered that Crepes a Gogo, one of the great crepe places in the city, is expanding into a second store in Yorkville. It’s a much bigger space. We’ll have to try it out once they open. They make a really mean basil, brie and baguette combination. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
When you have to wake up so early (I woke up at 4:15 this morning), it makes the morning/day seem really long. By 10 o’clock I had been up for 6 hours and it felt like I had accomplished an amount that I would feel at 2 PM. Of course waking up so early has its disadvantages; twice today I’ve had to take a nap because the lack of sleep from last night took its toll. Tonight I will try to get a good rest.
Tags: chinatown, city, clafouti, crepes-a-gogo, early-morning, mars, restaurants, sleep, Toronto
Remember my original Garbage Fridays post? Well almost exactly what I described before happened this morning. I was very tired this morning so it took me a bit longer to get ready. It was about 6:55 when I finally got outside to lug the garbage bins to the front to be picked up. The problem was that not only was the garbage truck early, it had already passed our house. Cursing to myself I returned inside. I felt quite angry at myself for missing the pickup because we had a lot of garbage to take away, particularly in our green bin. The next garbage pickup is two weeks away which wasn’t as big a problem back in the winter since it’s cold and the garbage doesn’t smell as much but now that it’s summer time, you really don’t want to have garbage lying around for too long in the sun. I may have to make a trip to the city’s drop-off depots on Monday in order to get rid of the stuff. The raccoons have been out in full force (I had to scare away 6 the other night from our recycling containers) so I really don’t want to have that garbage around for much longer.
I think the lesson is – make sure that I always wake up on time on Fridays that are also Garbage Fridays.
Tags: garbage-fridays, Lessons, raccoons
I read The Daily WTF every single day through RSS and boy almost every single day I crack up laughing. If you’re in software development then you should laugh at the boneheaded mistakes that exist in other software systems and it usually makes your own projects seem trivial and mistake-free in comparison. Today’s post on workflows had me actually laughing out loud. The comments are usually worthwhile to read too because you invariably get someone who thinks that the daily wtf post is a valid solution and tries to defend it. There are some running jokes like the Paula “Brilliant” “Brillant” bean (I’ve since implemented this into every single package that I’ve coded). It’s a site worthy of your time.
Tags: brillant, development, humor, programming, software, Technology, the-daily-wtf
Sometimes taking the Warden bus south in the afternoon is a really frustrating affair. For starters the bus is rarely on schedule so you end up with 2 or even 3 buses bunched together when they do finally arrive to my transfer point at Eglinton. This happened today when I waited almost 15 minutes for a bus and then 2 showed up at the same time. I decided to take the second one this time; usually I take the first but what usually happens is the second overtakes the first bus and ends up at the station several minutes earlier. When you have 3 buses to catch to get home these minutes make the difference between getting home at 6 and getting home at 6:20 or later.
Anyway so today I took the second bus but when we got to the Walmart stop (I have a whole other set of pet peeves about that stop) our driver stopped the bus and got out. This is the only route that I’ve seen this happen on and when it does happen it’s always bothers me. The driver going south switches with a driver going north. So you have to wait for the other driver to cross the street which can be difficult on Warden as it is a fairly busy street.
This happens at seemingly random times and not everyday though the time that I take the Warden bus is anywhere from 5:20 to 6:00. I’m not sure if the bus that I’m on going south is going off schedule because it’s later in the day or what. It’s never explained and if I were feeling particularly brave I could just take the bus for a spin myself (theoretically).
This is the end of the rant. You can start paying attention again. It was just something that I had to put down because it’s been in my head since we moved back in the fall.
Tags: 68, bus-driver, Commuting, rant, Toronto, ttc, warden
Inspired by Jason’s post about his Wikipedia Contrail I’ve decided to post my own. I’ll provide each item with a little blurb:
- Andrew Kahr – one of the reasons why Americans are in so much credit card debt
- Cube Route – a Piers Anthony book that I haven’t read (actually I haven’t read any Piers Anthony books)
- Home Depot – you can never know enough about the world’s 3rd largest retailer
- Kelley Blue Book – I’m trying to keep a more accurate appraisal of our car’s worth
- List of XML and HTML character entities – I needed to know what the XML representation for the pound symbol (#) was
- Tapestry (DHT) – I read an article that mentioned this so I wanted to look it up
I’m surprised the list is so short. It seems like I use Wikipedia much more often than it may seem here. In any case that’s my list for now.
Tags: contrail, meme, wikipedia
This morning when I was going on the bus to work I was challenged by the bus driver on the validity of my transfer. He seemed to think that I was not using it appropriately as there was no way I could have a transfer from the 102 Markham Road bus and be able to transfer at Warden and Eglinton onto a westbound Eglinton bus. Maybe he forgot that the bus runs both ways and it’s far more convenient for me to take the bus west to Warden station, take the Warden bus to Eglinton and transfer there than to take the Markham Road bus east and up to Markham Road and then have to face the hellish haul right through the heart of Scarborough along Eglinton which is far busier than little old St. Clair.
I’ve never had this happen before so I was taken a little offguard when he called me back to the front (though the bus was so busy that I couldn’t move very far in anyway). I explained how I got to Warden and Eglinton via the Markham Road bus though he didn’t seem to believe my story. In any case it’s the truth and if the bus driver doesn’t remember all of the combinations of routes that one could take to get to a particular spot, it’s not my fault. I know the transfer states explicitly that in the event of a fare dispute you have to pay the second fare anyway and then go to the TTC office with your complaint and fortunately that did not happen here.
We’ll see if there’s a repeat occurrence tonight when I go home though there’s much less of a chance for debate since the place that I use the transfer intersects the line that I get the transfer from. In any case it’ll be interesting.
Tags: bus-driver, Commuting, Toronto, transfer, ttc
Marcy and I went to see Friends with Money today. It seems that Darren Barefoot saw it recently too. It was a rather excellent film; I really liked the pace and how the different storylines intertwined. I also liked how each couple saw the other couples (and Olivia) differently but in the end they all have their issues despite how happy any one of the couples may appear on the outside.
An odd thing happened though when we purchased our tickets. The film was playing at the Kennedy Commons AMC which has a pretty fine selection of movies in my opinion. We bought our tickets and the other man who was trying to decide what to see in the lobby asked us if it was a good film or if it was a “chick flick”. I didn’t really know what to say; we hadn’t seen the film but since we had just purchased tickets we obviously had some interest in seeing it. Marcy responded that it was supposed to be a very smart film which was true. He ended up buying a ticket to the same show and we wondered what he thought of the movie but we didn’t wonder enough to ask him. If he’s willing to risk listening to a couple of people at the theatre that he doesn’t know then so be it.
Tags: amc, friends-with-money, kennedy-commons, Marriage, Movies
This Tuesday I watched a fascinating documentary on the CBC called Diet Confidential. It investigates the serial dieting that has a stranglehold on so many adult lives and how it’s more about marketing than being helpful. They mentioned that for most people when they go off of a diet they hold themselves personally responsible; it’s never the fault of the diet but rather the dieter. It also provided some historical perspective and it was interesting to see how many of these diets are cyclical; for example low carbohydrate diets were first popularized back in the Renaissance in England.
It’s really disconcerting how little concern the book publishers (and the companies that own them) have for the people who try out these diets. They fund dubious research to back up their claims, use their other media properties to promote the books and use their wealth and fame to gain access to celebrities’ routines in order to get them to lend their name to the cause.
Naturally food makers aren’t any less guilty; they take every advantage of consumers in order to boost their bottom lines. Hence the low-carb everything that we saw two years ago during the Atkins craze. They’ll do anything they can to get out their message – “Eat more but get thinner.”
My diet is rather simple – eat sensibly and things should fall in line. It doesn’t work for everyone but it works for me. I don’t care too much about what I eat. I know there are some things that I should cut out and some things that I should eat more of but the end result is that I feel good and healthy and that’s what really matters.
Now it’s time to go outside and water the plants. It should be a little bit cooler now that the sun is setting. It looks like the forecast for tomorrow is no better than today. It’s also time soon for some dinner; with the heat today it makes me far less hungry than most days.
Tags: Books, CBC, Cultural Criticism, diet-confidential, diets, documentaries, media
For whatever reason, corduroy pants don’t last longer than 6 months in my closet. It’s not that after 6 months with me they get up and take a vacation in Fiji but rather they get worn through and thus shouldn’t be worn anymore. Perhaps it’s because when I walk I have my legs close together which causes the fabric to wear down. I recently had to throw out a pair that suffered the same fate as many other preceding pants. It’s a wonder that I even purchase corduroy pants but they’re so comfortable that I can’t resist them. I will most likely be purchasing another pair in the fall. During the summer it’s unreasonable to wear corduroy as it is akin to wearing velvet and considering how well I do in the heat it would be a most unwise decision to make.
Tags: clothing, corduroy, Lessons, pants
We went to our local Toronto Public Library branch this afternoon because Marcy had some library fines from last year to pay. She’s looking to get some reading material once school is out and if there are outstanding fines they won’t let you borrow any more books.
We went in and gave the lady working the desk our new address information. It turns out that they don’t use the Interac machine sitting next to the computer though it clearly seemed to be on and working. We had to pay by cash instead and between Marcy and me we pulled together the required amount.
This seemed to shock the lady serving us. I’d say she was a librarian but that would be a lie as she was just “helping out this weekend”. Anyway she was shocked because after determining that we were married, she told us that her husband would never help her out in that way. He would be mad at her for even getting such a high fine. In truth the fine wasn’t even that much. You’d spend more at Chapters in an afternoon. She seemed to think that I was some prince for giving up my money to help pay a lowly library fine.
The truth is that it’s our money; we both earned it so to praise me (and indirectly condemning Marcy) in this way she was acting in a very sexist manner. I guess the old “lord of the household” mentality hasn’t really disappeared. It’s disappointing that she felt that she had to talk to us this way but we let it go and walked away. Hopefully she’s not there the next time we go to the branch. She might say that Marcy should be home instead of out in public.
Tags: Books, Cultural Criticism, fines, library, Marriage, Money, Toronto, toronto-public-library, tpl
Man is it ever hot outside today. We went downtown to see the Taste of Little Italy festival and we almost melted into the street. It was a lot of fun being down there though especially as it’s World Cup time and Portugal and Italy (whose fans make up a big stretch of College street between Bathurst and Dufferin) were both playing today so the fans were out in full force. I took my camera along and took a few pictures including some breakdancing shots and a man who decided it was fashionable to wear a suit jacket and shorts. You can make the call on that one once I’ve uploaded them to Flickr.
Fortunately we took the TTC downtown as the day pass is very reasonable ($8.50) and it covers both of our fares. It would have been almost the same price to park plus getting downtown is so much easier on the subway and streetcar than to have to deal with the cars and closed streets in your own car. I wish the streetcars would have been air conditioned though.
We were wondering as we were walking back to the car at Warden station whether it was hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement. How hot does it have to be anyway? My guess would be that the pavement is over 30 degrees Celsius today, maybe even hotter so it would seem reasonable to think that that would be a high enough temperature to do some cooking but alas we didn’t have an egg around to verify the hypothesis. I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time it’s this hot. That will be tomorrow.
As I was finding the link to the Taste of Little Italy festival I noticed that this isn’t the big one. This is Little Italy College Street. The Corso Italia Toronto Fiesta is July 7th to 9th. We have a wedding to go to that weekend but maybe we’ll check out the Sunday events. There’s also talk of perhaps going to Ottawa for their jazz festival during that time. Oh wait, that’s over by then. It runs from June 22nd to July 2nd. For some reason I thought that it ran until after the 9th. My mistake I guess.
I’ve decided that there is no good time to take the 34 Eglinton East bus if you’re heading into or out of Scarborough. I worked until 7 tonight (Marcy had a bridal shower in Peterborough to go to) and when I got on the bus it was still standing-room only. It’s the same situation if I take the bus at 5 PM. I have to play the bus shuffle from when I get on until I get off at Warden.
Going to work in the morning (when I don’t have a ride) is the same situation. It’s always the stretch between Pharmacy and work that give me the most headaches; in the morning Sloane/Bermondsey and Victoria Park are the most troublesome. We’ll see next week if it’s still a problem; as the schools get into the final exam mode most of the high school students don’t need to take the bus when I’m on it so that should hopefully lighten the load in the morning somewhat. In the evening though it’s mainly working people who are on the bus (and people with strollers) so unless there’s a mass layoff I can’t see myself having the bus to myself.
Eglinton is the backbone of the East-West Scarborough transit so it’s no surprise that the line is so busy and if any one bus is late the problem compounds itself so that it’s like being in a sardine can. Unless they can run more buses or move to a transit offering that can handle the increased loads, I think we’re going to be in this situation for a long time. It’s unfortunate that it’s the quickest way for me to get home; it takes 10 minutes to drive but 60 minutes by transit. I’m not really complaining, it could be worse like where we lived before. There it was 105 minutes one way and during the summer was dreadfully hot (the bus route was not privileged enough to get air-conditioned buses).
Tags: 34-eglinton-east, bus, Commuting, eglinton, Toronto, ttc
I think I tempted fate this morning. I was thinking to myself that so far this allergy season hasn’t been so bad. So what do you think happened next? Naturally a full-blown allergy attack the likes of which I haven’t seen this season so far hits me. I may be tempting fate again right now just by mentioning what happened. I’ve been taking my allergy pills very regularly so I’m hoping that I’ll be safe from fate. In any case I feel much better now that the pill has kicked in.
Tags: allergies, tempting-fate
Mr. Dressup is going off the air in September. It’s truly the end of an era in Canadian children’s television. I grew up watching Mr. Dressup. It’ll be a sad day when the last show airs although Ernie Coombs (Mr. Dressup himself) passed away in 2001 and there haven’t been any new episodes since 1996.
The gentle pace of the show is falling out of favour with Canadian children and ratings have been in decline, said Jeff Keay, CBC’s head of media relations.
The show does in fact have a gentle pace though I never thought of that phrase in association with the show until I read it in that article. I wonder if they will bring the show out on DVD; there’s so much to learn from the children’s shows from when I was growing up.
I had the theme song from Today’s Special in my head in the weekend. I always liked that show. Other favourites (in the public broadcasting scene) were 3-2-1 Contact, Square One, Mr. Wizard, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and Reading Rainbow. All of these shows played an important part in shaping who I am today.
Tags: 3-2-1-contact, casey, CBC, children's-television, ernie-coombs, finnegan, mr.-dressup, mr.-wizard, pbs, public-television, reading-rainbow, square-one, today's-special, where-in-the-world-is-carmen-sandiego?
I posted a couple of weeks ago about The Beerded Chip which is a restaurant in Scarborough that we like to go to. The only problem is that I typed it the way it should be properly spelled – The Bearded Chip as in a chip that has a beard. This of course isn’t the real name of the restaurant. It’s in fact spelled The Beerded Chip as in a chip that has beer. It’s strange that I would spell it incorrectly (or correctly depending on how much of a stickler you would be) because I go by the restaurant at least twice a day and each time I look at the sign (it’s not a terribly exciting ride).
What’s even stranger is that I’ve thought about writing this post for quite a while. Is that sad? I just wanted to set the record straight. All of the people who have found this site through searching for “The Bearded Chip” (and there are surprisingly many) can also search for “The Beerded Chip”. That should lead to an exponential increase in traffic to this site. And that’s what it’s all about.
Tags: puns, restaurants, spelling, the-bearded-chip, the-beerded-chip, Toronto
Marcy went to HomeSense this evening to buy some shower gifts for Tara and while there she also purchased some nifty-looking lamps and small vases for our own mantle. Here’s what they look like:
I think they look really sharp up there. Also here’s a closer picture of one of the vases:
Marcy has a really good eye for these things and she’s added little touches to our living space that really make it warm and comfortable to be in. That’s what makes us such a great team (I keep coming back to this): things that I might not necessarily think to spend time on are things that Marcy is good at and vice versa. It’s fun building a home.
Tomorrow we’re going to spend some more time outside and clean up the backyard deck as it has been a general organizing ground while we planted our flowers and plants this spring. We need to find a new home for our recycling bins among other things and hopefully I’ll be able to get our hooks attached so that we can put our hanging baskets up. Also tomorrow night we’re having some friends over for bbq (Rob Rainfordstyle). It’s going to be a mangofilled dinner that is sure to taste great. Perhaps you can even stay tuned for some pictures of the event.
Tags: bbq, decorations, gardening, home, house, Lessons, licence-to-grill, Marriage, organizing, outdoors, rob-rainford
Well me and the Prime Minister can agree on some things:
All too often, family pets such as dogs and cats find themselves in shelters as a result of being abandoned or rescued.
The Harpers are proud to support and participate in the Ottawa Humane Society’s Foster Program, which provides temporary homes for pets in the community who are not yet ready for adoption.
The program fosters out animals with mild health or behaviour issues who need individual care and nurturing to help them recover before they are adopted by new, loving foster families.
Laureen and Stephen have been foster parents to many cats during the past year. At any given time, the Harpers have provided foster care to numerous cats at their Ottawa home.
There’s a really cute picture of two kittens in the link too just for your enjoyment. I’m a great supporter of rescuing pets; all of our cats today are technically rescue cats, particularly Eve and Quentin. I think it’s really important to provide homes for these animals because without us they wouldn’t be around (euphemism) and besides which they provide so much love and honest-to-goodness fun in the house that it’s impossible not to love them. Our cats are an integral part of our life here and I wouldn’t trade that in for anything.
Tags: Cats, elle, eve, fostering, pets, pumpkin, quentin, stephen-harper
Don’t forget it’s the Distillery Blues Festival this weekend. Now that I know where the Distillery District is it might be something worth our while to see though this weekend is already pretty busy. If we do head downtown there’s also Woofstock as competition for our attention. What to do?
Tags: blues, distillery-blues-festival, distillery-district, dogs, Music, woofstock
Lifehacker has an interesting series of articles on Cygwin.
Here’s the deal, Windows users: the command line is your friend. But the Windows command line? It’s a really bad friend. You know, the kind that would ditch you in a minute if he got an offer to hang out with someone cooler, the kind who re-gifted that Chia pet from Cousin Jeb for your birthday, the kind who sticks you with the bill every time. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I use Cygwin all of the time at work; it’s a great way to emulate a Unix command environment while still keeping Windows as your main desktop. It’s a very handy suite of tools and if you’re at all familiar with Unix commands then it’ll feel right at home. In addition it allows you to get around the nasty explorer.exe process that has a habit of holding onto files and folders for no apparent reason.
Tags: cygwin, lifehacker, linux, tools, unix, windows
This is a very interesting review of Douglas Coupland’s new book, JPod. Cory says it’s the anti-Microserfs. I read Microserfs in the summer of 2002 just before I went to work for Microsoft as an intern. It was ridiculous how similar to my own life the book felt and I tore through it like a banshee. Since then I’ve read a lot of Coupland’s works but nothing captivated me as much as Microserfs. In many ways it was one of the few fiction books that I could identify with; the characters were me and that really resonated. I know a lot of other people felt the same way particularly those in the technology field
I’ve read a lot of reviews of JPod and it seems to be on the same level as Microserfs. The tone has changed somewhat and looking back on technology from this side of the tech-bubble of the late 90’s gives people a very different perspective on what it’s like to work in technology or for a company focused on technology. It’s hardly the saving grace that many hoped it would be and even when you’re working for a very hot company with state-of-the-art tools, it doesn’t mean that you will find fulfillment in your career. Fortunately for me I’m getting great enjoyment from my job but that’s more to do with the team of people that I work with than the particular technology I’m using. Peopleware is my credo on most of these issues.
In any case, JPod is definitely a book that I am going to want to read; I should probably go through my big list of “to-read” first before buying anything new (yeah right I always say that).
Tags: Books, Career, douglas-coupland, jpod, microserfs, microsoft, peopleware, reviews
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I went home early (well earlier than usual) at 4 PM; my ride in the morning goes home around that time and I felt (from Marcy’s urging) that if I didn’t leave work early that I would cause some serious harm to myself and wind up sick. So I came home early and took a nap. A nearly two-hour long nap. Boy I felt pretty tired when I woke up but that nap combined with my sleep last night left me really rejuvenated today. I felt 10x better. I feel like I finally started shaking the weariness of working two weeks straight and this should only improve over the next couple of nights as I am definitely not working this weekend.
My policy towards overtime is really straightforward: it’s not necessary most of the time. If you work 8 solid hours (and I mean solid) then there’s really no reason to keep working because your career is a marathon, not a sprint. You need a life outside of work and if you’re going to prosper in the long-run then you’d better be prepared to moderate yourself. I practice what I preach and I try to convey this to my team. It’s extremely important if you want to make your work a career and not your life.
Tags: Career, Health, marathon, moderation, overtime, rest, sleep, sprint
From my post yesterday about the reasons to storm the building I give you the full list (again taken from this post):
Top Ten Reasons to Take Over the CBC Building
- It’s easy to do. The security code for the doors is S-T-R-O-M-B-O-L.., er… S-T-R-O-B-L-O-M… . on second thought, bring guns.
- Three words: Massive Muppets archive.
- Hold the right people hostage, and you can enjoy months of around-the-clock Danger Bay re-runs. Can Global give you that kind of service? I didn’t think so.
- Before you’re turned over to police, several CBC journalistic policy boards will meet to determine whether you should be referred to as a terrorist, militant, activist, freedom fighter, or misguided munitions philanthropist. This process will take several years. In the meantime, we’ll assign you a nice cubicle and modest benefits package.
- Does CTV have a sushi bar in its lobby? Huh? Does it?
- We can broadcast your demands in HDTV and put them into podcasts. We can simultaneously translate them into multiple languages. And, in a pinch, we can arrange for Don Cherry to call the Prime Minister names for you.
- The conference centre is across the street. (Hey, it’s not much, but sometimes Americans hang out there. Don’t you guys hate them more?)
- You can re-do the daily time signal on CBC Radio One. The beginning of the long dash can now be “The beginning of the Holy Insurgency Signalling Silence, You Followers In Tyranny!” (HISSY-FIT)
- Promo Girl’s office is 4G812. Just in case, you know… you need to fire off some spare rounds. Or something. I’m just sayin’.
- And most importantly — you’ll get to meet Luba Goy. (You’re welcome to smack her around a bit if you like.)
So laugh if you will at the list. I found it funny.
Tags: CBC
This seems like a really odd way of advertising. It might be ok if the subway car isn’t very full but if it’s jammed full of people then I don’t think many people would want to lean over the people sitting down just to listen to what Pepsi thinks is a cool song. It seems to me that Pepsi has this idealistic view where everyone takes public transit and thus a lot of people see their ad yet it’s not so busy that people can’t absorb the ad (listen to the music in this case). Sadly the reality is anything but; hopefully Pepsi realizes this in the revenue generated by this string of advertising (if that can be measured).
Tags: advertising, Commuting, pepsi, subway, Toronto, ttc
I really loved this list of the Top Ten Reasons to Take Over the CBC Building put out by Tod Maffin. It’s spurned because of the news on Tuesday that the CBC building downtown may have been a target of the terrorist cell arrested last week. Being a CBC kid means that I get a lot of these jokes. I especially liked #2:
Three words: Massive Muppets archive.
and #3:
Hold the right people hostage, and you can enjoy months of around-the-clock Danger Bay re-runs. Can Global give you that kind of service? I didn’t think so.
I think if Marcy were to hold it hostage she’d ask for Black Harbour re-runs instead of Danger Bay but that’s beside the point. I think it’s important to laugh at these kinds of things which is the whole reasoning behind
this site (run by
Warren Kinsella). I’ll have to keep tuned into the events around that site because I think the rally that they’re planning would be an interesting one to attend.
Tags: black-harbour, CBC, danger-bay, i-am-not-afraid, terrorism, Toronto, warren-kinsella
That was the comment on the ride into work this morning (not made by me) and it all relates to this big news from Iraq. This could potentially change a lot of things over there and that’s only if it’s true; it can be hard to be certain that you’ve killed someone that you have barely seen or have little physical information about. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days. I know the Americans will be hyping this up quite a bit and to a certain extent they should because it is a huge blow for Al Qaeda but at the same time it’s not the traditional hierarchical structure that they’re dealing with; there will be a replacement and my bet is that many of the cells in Iraq are pretty autonomous anyway. There’s probably not much direction from the top as you might think. Naturally this is all speculation; I have little-to-no intelligence resources related to the war in Iraq so take everything I said in this post with a huge grain of salt.
Tags: al-zarqawi, iraq, war
About a month or so ago I decided to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste for work. I got a little travel toothbrush but unfortunately I haven’t really used it at all until now. Last night before I went home I was really tired and my mouth felt a little disgusting so I decided to brush my teeth before heading home. I felt a lot more awake after that.
A similar thing happened this morning. I woke up at my time this week (5:45) and was pretty tired (naturally). I got ready for work and packed my lunch and then once I got to work (at 6:45) instead of just sitting down and having a coffee I decided to brush my teeth again. Well I did and again I feel a lot more awake plus my teeth feel much cleaner so I think it’s a win all-around. My goal today is to leave at an earlier time than I have been and if necessary take a nap when I get home. If I continue along this path I will burnout or get quite sick and that’s definitely not what I want to face. I need to recover from the weekend and without proper rest that won’t happen.
Tags: exhaustion, Health, Lessons, toothbrush, Work
I saw this ad (which is a real one appearing in a newspaper in California) and realized that The Daily Show can win any fake news competition around. Katie Couric doesn’t stand a chance.
Tags: advertising, katie-couric, the-daily-show
Last night we went to see Over The Hedge. What a fantastic film! The fact that it’s so short (87 minutes) is the one negative strike I have against it but then again the plot ended itself within that time and considering how it’s targeted at kids it makes sense to not have it to be too long. It wa
